Mohamed Fahmy confers with lawyer Amal Clooney at court in Cairo, Egypt, before being sentenced to three years in prison at their retrial on August 29, 2015. Photo courtesy Moussa Ibrahim/Canadian Press

On Saturday, an Egyptian court sentenced three al-Jazeera English journalists to three years in a maximum security prison. According to the verdict issued by Hassan Farid, the judge presiding over the case, Canadian national Mohamed Fahmy, Australian Peter Greste, and Egyptian Baher Mohamed were found guilty of operating without proper press licenses, and "spreading false and harmful news" in the country.

The retrial's verdict came as a shock to the crowded Cairo courtroom, where it was largely believed that the journalists would receive a suspended sentence, or time served. During the past 18 months, the case has garnered considerable international controversy, with foreign governments and human rights organizations denouncing the legal proceedings as "a miscarriage of justice," a "sham," and "chilling" and "draconian."

The three journalists were originally arrested in December 2013, on alleged charges of operating without licenses and "aiding a terrorist organization." In June 2014, in the case's first verdict, Fahmy and Greste were each sentenced to seven years imprisonment, while Mohamed was handed down a ten-year sentence (the additional three years for being in possession of a spent bullet).

In July 2014, Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi said that he "wished they [the journalists] were deported immediately after they were arrested instead of being put on trial." But the president insisted that Egypt's judiciary was independent and therefore he would not intervene until all judicial proceedings, including the appeals process, had ended.

OTTAWA'S RESPONSE
Following Saturday's verdict, Lynne Yelich, Canada's minister of state for Foreign Affairs and Consular said, "Canada is disappointed with Mohamed Fahmy's conviction today. ‎This decision severely undermines confidence in the rule of law in Egypt."

The minister's press release went on to say that, "Senior Canadian officials in Canada and in Cairo are pressing Egyptian authorities on Mr. Fahmy's case. This includes advocating for the same treatment of Mr. Fahmy as other foreign nationals have received."

Greste was charged in absentia on Saturday. He was deported back to Australia on February 1 of this year, under a presidential decree el-Sisi issued in November that allowed foreign prisoners to be repatriated to their home countries. Fahmy, originally a dual citizen of both Canada and Egypt, gave up his Egyptian citizenship to be admissible for repatriation under the same law. The day after Greste left Cairo, former minister of Foreign Affairs, John Baird, announced that Fahmy's own repatriation was "imminent."

Baird's statement however, would prove empty, as Fahmy's return was continuously pushed back, until eventually it became clear he would remain in Egypt for the entire retrial of the case.

EVERYONE URGES HARPER TO DO MORE
In Canada, with the election trail in full swing, opposition parties this weekend called on prime minister Stephen Harper to do more for Fahmy.

NDP Foreign Affairs Critic Paul Dewar stated that Harper "must take a break from electioneering," speak directly to el-Sisi, and receive "a personal guarantee that Mr. Fahmy will be pardoned and returned to Canada immediately."

"Harper has an obligation to use the full force of the PMO to help citizens when they are unjustly imprisoned abroad. His inaction must end today," said Liberal leader Justin Trudeau in a press release.

On Sunday, Amal Clooney, one of Fahmy's attorneys, said in an interview with the CBC, that she and Troy Lulashynk, the Canadian ambassador to Egypt, had formally filed for a pardon and deportation for her client to the Egyptian authorities. Clooney has called on el-Sisi to make true of his November statement, and intervene in the case to have Fahmy sent back to Canada.

However, she too, urged Harper to "engage directly with President Sisi." "If I were a Canadian citizen, I would want to see my prime minister now showing leadership on the global stage," said Clooney.

Ottawa has long been criticized for dragging its feet in finding a diplomatic solution for the journalist's case. While Fahmy has said that the Canadian consular services team in Cairo has been supportive, Ottawa's official statements have come off as lukewarm. While the British, Australian, and American officials strongly condemned the June 2014 verdict, Canada's own reaction was comparatively low-key.

The Conservatives had also been criticized for using Fahmy's dual citizenshipas an excusefor their slow response.

Baird initially defended Ottawa's subdued response by saying "bullhorn diplomacy" would not be effective. Following a meeting with his counterpart in Cairo in January, Baird said he was "hopeful" for Fahmy's release. Yet, Fahmy remained in Egypt, even after Greste's release. And seven months later, the Canadian journalist is still there.

Before Fahmy's retrial began in February, his family and supporters began the #HarperCallEgypt campaign on social media to push the prime minister to take more direct action and apply pressure to the Egyptian government.

EGYPT PUSHES OUT PRESS FREEDOM
The trio's case has been heavily criticized as an affront to freedom of the press in the country, and as a highly politicized case, with the journalists having been seen as collateral between a feuding Egypt and Qatar.

While al-Jazeera English is a separate channel and had built up a reputation of impartial reporting, the Qatari network's Egyptian Mubasher Misr channel was seen as biased and sympathetic towards the Brotherhood. Moreover, Doha had offered Brotherhood members refuge following the Egyptian military's ouster of former president Mohamed Morsi and the beginning of the increasing crackdown on the group.

"The charges against Mohamed Fahmy, Peter Greste, and Baher Mohamed were always baseless and politicized and they should never have been arrested and tried in the first place," said Philip Luther, Amnesty International's director for the Middle East and North Africa.

"The verdict today sends a very dangerous message in Egypt," Clooney told the press outside of Saturday's courtroom. "It sends the message that journalists can be locked up for simply doing their job, for telling the truth and reporting the news."

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Egypt currently has 22 journalists behind bars. Most of those are accused of belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, says CPJ.

Last month, the Egyptian government passed a sweeping anti-terrorism law that includes a $33,860–$84,600 CAD fine for journalists whose reports on terrorism, militant attacks, and security operations don't align with that of the military's official statements.

Ottawa has continuously stated that it "supports Egypt's transition to democracy." Egypt however, continues to provide evidence that, if it is making any move at all, it is back-pedaling in the opposite direction. The fact that one of its citizens has been convicted a second time to imprisonment in Egypt on dubious charges, should make Canada's muted response more difficult to maintain.

All images by the author.

Fitzy wears a camouflage Kevlar vest with a little Australian flag tied to the back. The cops won't let him into the demonstration because of what he is wearing—but he refuses to remove the vest on principle. "It's a crime to be a proud Australian," he says. "But those leftie muzza rats can get away with wearing face masks and whatever they want."

Fitzy is a Bendigo resident who's showed up to protest the construction of a large mosque on the east side of town. The structure was recently greenlit by Victoria's planning tribunal. While the city's councilors supported the mosque, it drew criticism from residents and local opposition prompted a review by the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal. "The mosque will be really close to the army base, where they have all their weapons and a shooting range and stuff," Fitzy observes. "Nobody wants it here."

The anti-mosque crowd is several hundred strong, made up of an eclectic mix of white people. They sport clothing from the Royal Australian Infidels imprint; biker gang leathers; elaborate tattoos; and shirts that decry Islam as a political ideology, not a religion. They wave Australian, Aboriginal, and boxing kangaroo flags, and hold white placards that claim: ISLAM OPPRESSES WOMEN and 80% OF BENDIGO RESIDENTS OPPOSE THE MOSQUE.

The placards were prepared by Rights For Bendigo Residents, a local group that has fought the mosque plans from day one. "Our objections to the mosque are all legal ones," says Judy, a Rights For Bendigo Residents member, citing fraud and conflicts of interest in the development application. But she also expresses misgivings about Muslims' capacity to integrate. "They've got their prayer hall up at the uni," Judy says. "During their Friday afternoon prayer session, or whatever you call it, only about 30 of them turn up. So why do they need a mosque with a capacity of 2000 people?"

The protest was lead by Rights For Bendigo Residents, a local group that has fought the mosque plans from day one.

A series of speakers address the crowd through a modest PA, shouting partly through fervor, partly as a practical necessity. Counter-demonstrators turn up and attempt to drown out the anti-mosque speakers with chants of "You are a wanker!"

Blair Cottrell, head of United Patriots Front Victoria, laughs at the counter-demonstrators. He says the crowd of patriots is gathered today not just for Bendigo's sake, but because the future of Australia is at stake. He builds momentum, and his face turns red with rage as he gestures wildly, pleading with open hands and shaking clenched fists. He pauses to let the crowd cheer, looking up at the overcast sky as if seeking further inspiration.

"I know from the feeling in this place that you're ready to fight," Cottrell says. "We are nation of people where I can turn to each other and say, 'This is my brother, this is my countryman, he will not let me down, I will not let him down. We are Australian!'"

The crowd cheers then goes weirdly quiet. There are murmurs of discontent before someone shouts, "They're burning the flag!" Cottrell runs off stage, joining the tide of outraged patriots that races to confront the counter-demonstrators doing the burning, their fury amplified by the counter-demonstrators' taunts. A cloud of dust puffs into the air as the police deploy capsicum spray to beat back the surge. A man races away from the frontline with a painful streak of orange goo on his face. The mild breeze carries the spray beyond the protesters, leaving passive onlookers coughing and spluttering and wiping their eyes.

A young man climbs a tall sculpture and waves an Australian flag. The anti-mosque crowd claps and cheers delightedly. Peter watches the impromptu flag-raising ceremony, arms folded, still clearing his throat from the lingering spray. He's made the trip up from Melbourne and isn't affiliated with any particular group. He describes himself as "just a shit-kicker" who became interested in Islam's ills when the Syrian Civil War commenced. He reels off a list of right-wing websites—Gates of Vienna, The Counter Jihad Report—that have informed his private research.

"I'm sick of it," Peter says. "They want to take us back to the dark ages. All the videos I've watched—the burnings, the beheadings—you become numb to it after a while. And that's really sad."

He points at the town hall clock tower. "If you or I were homosexual—which I'm not, but just say for argument's sake—then they'd push you off that tower, and if you survived, a crowd of people would stand around throwing stones at you to finish the job."

Suddenly, as though someone has flicked off the vitriol switch, the crowd quietly disperses, some loitering to catch a handshake. Word goes around that they will be celebrating the day at the nearby Hotel Shamrock. Later they stand outside, smoking and preaching the Islamic threat to a middle-aged diner from the neighboring restaurant.

"They lie and manipulate us, it's taqiyyah," an older lady tells him, but he's not convinced and goes back inside.

"Fuck off then, ya leftie dog!" Morgan shouts, lifting his shirt to reveal the words tattooed on his pale stomach. They read: "Aussie Pride, motherfucker!"

His compatriot Evan is more reserved, a private military contractor who's worked in the Middle East and will soon be returning.

"I've seen what they do, what kind of people they are," Evan says. "If Australia doesn't wake up soon, it'll be too late. Just look at England."

Evan concedes that the vast majority of Muslims are fine—he's even fought alongside them, "and they would've taken a bullet for me, no question." But it's the "minority of fuckwits" that are the problem with Islam.

"They want to move in—it's not just a new mosque, they're building shops and houses too—and take over Central Victoria. From there, who knows what could happen?"

A pair of riot police cars has been doing restless laps of the main street. Morgan spots them and sneers, giving them the finger. An older lady suggests they'd better get moving if they want to get to the bottle-o before it closes. They head off into the night, Morgan shouting insults as the police turn back for another high-vis pass.

A version of this article originally appeared on VICE UK.

In the week that saw Oxford Dictionaries adding bants and butthurts to its line-up, one shop came to the public's attention for its use of an even more ridiculous word: It is called Wanker's, and you'll find it on Wanker's Corner.

The owners of Wanker's Country Store—"Where the good times come easy!"—in Oregon are fully aware that the shop's name is a common insult in British English that means "idiot" or, more literally, "masturbator, " but they're proud of their long heritage.

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The family-owned shop sells speciality wines in the Wanker's Wine Cave, as well as fine cigars (so often the smoke of choice for wankers), hot food from the Wanker's deli, and Wanker's branded T-shirts and hoodies. "Plus an ATM!"

Perhaps understandably, on social media Wanker's is often the butt of a rather one-note joke:

The shop's proprietor, Rob Schneider—no, not that Rob Schneider—told me the story behind the name: "It's named after the Wanker family, who still own the property, and are my landlords. Their name is spelled like wanker, but it's a German pronunciation, Wonker, and in German wanker doesn't mean the same thing." According to a cursory Google, other famous Wankers have included Austrian curler Werner Wanker, Belgian guitarist Jerry Wanker, and, if we believe Portlandia, pretty much everyone in the nearby city of Portland.

Schneider is well aware of the word's double meaning, and says his store has gained a lot of celebrity Wanker's fans over the years. Harrison Ford and Brendan Fraser even filmed a movie there, at the old Wanker's Corner Saloon bar next door. "Movie stars have their pictures taken in front of it... Mo Farah has been here and taken his picture." No wonder the Wanker clan have kept a firm hold on their veritable family jewel.

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Mo Farah is indeed a fan of Wanker's:

I was excited by the idea of a Wanker's Wine Cave, but it turns out to be disappointingly straight laced: "Yeah, people sit and eat their lunches and dinners, and there's a big wine barrel table. A table made out of a wine barrel. Then there's just a lot of wine for sale, it's a hexagonal shaped room and there's wine for sale all around the outside, and people sit and eat in the middle."

Wanker's Wine Cave. Image via

Surprisingly they're still looking for sponsors for the huge illuminated Wanker's sign outside. Who wouldn't want to have their brand associated with Wanker's?

Schneider registered the name registered so nobody else could use it, which you have to think might be overkill. He gets a lot of Brits and Australians coming in to check out the wares and pick up a T-shirt, but it never rubs him the wrong way: "It doesn't get to be a pain, it doesn't cause any problem at all."

The logo of the Wanker's fan club

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Photo via Flickr user Governor Tom Wolf

Late summer is a particularly painful time for Denise Cullen, who lost her 27-year-old son, Jeff, to an overdose of morphine and Xanax on August 5, 2008. Cullen didn't just mourn, however: She organized, propelled by a desire that no other family ever undergo that pain.

New efforts to fight overdose—like a recently announced Obama administration initiative—are underway. But surprisingly, for a condition that is so common and so deadly, some key details remain widely unknown—details that could be life-saving in the right hands. If we want to prevent overdose, we need to gather and distribute this information to those who need it most.

"We absolutely aren't doing enough," Cullen tells me.

As a founder and executive director of GRASP / Broken No More, Cullen told me she planned to spend the night before International Overdose Day—today, August 31—at a walk, lighting candles and tossing rose petals off Huntington Beach Pier in California. Marchers were to honor lost loved ones and call for more humane and effective policies to prevent overdose and treat addiction.

Cullen, unfortunately, has plenty of company. GRASP, which stands for Grief Recovery After a Substance Passing, now has 100 chapters in 31 states and Canada, which provide support groups for families; Broken No More is the part of the group that works for political change.

The organization's growth parallels the frightening rise in overdose deaths, which almost quadrupled between 2000 and 2013, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Overdose now kills nearly 44,000 people annually—and more than half of these deaths, like Jeff's, involve opioids like heroin or prescription drugs.

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We're missing some important opportunities to prevent these deaths, as Jeff's case tragically illustrates. Research has long suggested that a significant proportion of overdose fatalities are due to situational factors like how recently someone has been incarcerated, where the drugs are taken, and what combination of drugs are used. Many users are not aware of the nature of these risks.

Less than two days before Jeff died, he'd been released from jail, where he'd served four months for driving while under the influence of drugs, as the Orange-County Register reported in 2013.

In a sensible system, of course, he'd have been treated for his addiction rather than incarcerated, or have gotten treatment in jail—but that didn't happen. And the treatment he did receive between earlier arrests never addressed his real problems.

Jeff had been a well-loved only child. His mom is a social worker and former police dispatcher and his father, who now helps run GRASP, is a businessman. "He was a really caring, compassionate person," Cullen says.

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Jeff's troubles started early: He was diagnosed with attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) at age nine and was never able to overcome the impulsivity linked with that condition. He began getting involved with drugs at 14, eventually injecting methamphetamine and later heroin.

But just before he died, it seemed as though he was about to turn a corner. He'd been sentenced to six months followed by treatment on a driving under the influence of drugs charge—and his mom had finally found a rehab for him that would allow him to try new medication for ADHD, rather than require he completely abstain from drug use.

However, the jail released him before the center had an open slot, basically setting him up to fail. He was also likely given no warning about his extraordinarily high risk of overdose at the time, which was related to the fact that after withdrawal and abstinence in jail, he had little tolerance for doses of heroin that he had previously relied on.

It's hard to exaggerate the nature of this risk—during the first days and weeks after release, it is multiplied by a factor of between 40 and 129, according to research.

What's more, there's a well-known way to reduce it: educating the former inmates and their families and friends about the problem, and providing access to the overdose reversing drug, naloxone—a nontoxic and non-intoxicating substance that can mean the difference between life and death in overdoses that include opioids.

"None of that was happening," according to Cullen, who learned about programs to distribute naloxone to families only after Jeff had died. She says the drug should be in every first-aid kit and that everyone should know the signs of overdose and what to do if they see them. (You can find out where to get naloxone here).

The day of his death, Jeff apparently met up with an old drug connection, from whom he probably obtained morphine pills. He took them along with Xanax, which he had been prescribed. This is among the most dangerous combinations because both can suppress the brain's breathing centers.

Kenneth Anderson, who runs a harm reduction organization aimed at helping alcohol and other drug users called HAMS, recently set up a website and Facebook page to try to get the word out about the risks of drug mixing.

He cites statistics from the New York City health department which show that 94 percent of recent overdose deaths here involved multiple drugs. In other studies, at least two-thirds of "opioid" overdoses are in fact linked to mixtures. Arguing that the media misinforms the public by labeling these deaths "heroin overdoses" or "prescription drug overdoses," Anderson says they should be called "poly-drug poisoning or drug-mixing deaths."

"I'm hoping to spread this information a bit more and help people to be safer and die less," he says.

Far more than you would expect, people who were treated for overdose reported that they had taken their typical dose, but in an unusual situation.

Another strong influence on overdose risk appears to be the setting in which the drug is taken. A study published in Science magazine way back in 1982 found that 50 percent of rats given a dose of heroin that they had previously tolerated in one cage would die from that same dose if it was given in an unfamiliar place.

Other research shows the same effects in humans with heroin addiction: far more than you would expect, people who were treated for overdose reported that they had taken their typical dose, but in an unusual situation.

What's probably going on here is that the brain unconsciously learns cues that normally predict the experience of a drug—like entering the room where you usually get high—and responds with tolerance that prevents overdose. When those cues aren't present, tolerance isn't evoked or doesn't counteract the drug in time.

"Tolerance is a manifestation of association," says Shepard Siegel of McMaster University in Canada, the author of the Science paper and several follow-up studies. "By changing the environment, you don't see the expected level of tolerance."

Siegel is concerned that this issue isn't getting much attention as overdose numbers rise. "I have bemoaned fact this has not gotten enough publicity as a cause for overdose," he says, adding that I was the only journalist he's heard from recently, despite dozens of articles being written on the "overdose epidemic."

Siegel also points out that deaths that appear to be due to drug-mixing may really be linked to the way tolerance relies on a predictable sequence of drug effects. If a new drug is taken first or even simultaneously, the brain may not recognize the experience as one to which it has become tolerant—and the usual dose may become an overdose.

More research is needed to determine what types of environmental cues are most important for tolerance. But people at risk for overdose should be taught that if they take their usual dose in a different place, with different kinds of drugs, or in an extreme emotional state, their risk may be higher.

When Jeff was found dead, he was lying on lawn, near an apartment building. He'd been there for at least four hours—but because he was a young man, passersby probably assumed he was sleeping off a drunk night, homeless, or both.

"We don't care about these people," says Cullen, describing what she sees as callous indifference. "'Oh no, it's just another lazy homeless person.'"

And those hours that passed were precious: Opioid overdose kills slowly, by stopping the breathing process, and if help had come sooner, Jeff might have been saved with a shot of naloxone. But by the time someone finally noticed that he hadn't moved for a long time and called 9-1-1, it was too late.

Ultimately, Cullen says that what killed her son is stigma: a failure to see drug users as human beings whose lives are worth saving.

Cullen doesn't blame the drug dealer who sold Jeff the stuff, knowing that users tend to sell to keep themselves supplied and that Jeff could have just as easily been the seller, not the one who died. "If your kid has been using for long enough, they probably dealt," she says.

But she does blame the apathy of those who saw her son and did nothing, along with the treatment system, which is frequently punitive and often fails to accept medical evidence. And she blames American drug policy for treating a health condition like a crime and failing even to coordinate treatment and punishment.

Ultimately, what kills overdose victims is stigma: a failure to see drug users as human beings whose lives are worth saving. Every overdose victim is someone's child—and may also be a spouse, sibling or parent. Every victim is a person, who can make a contribution, when given the right opportunities. But there is no recovery from death—and we can do much better at preventing overdose and addiction from killing.

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Image via Flickr user Cecil Sanders

Read: There's No Place Like Nome

On Sunday, President Obama officially changed the name of the United States' tallest mountain. Alaska's Mount McKinley had been named after the 25th president for more than a century, but Obama used his executive power to return it to its original name, Denali, given to it by the indigenous Athabascan people.

Obama begins a three-day tour of the state this week, making him the first sitting president to visit the Alaskan arctic—an area his administration considers a "canary in the climate change coal mine," according to CNN. The mountain's name change is partially to bring attention to Alaska's indigenous people, whom the White House says are at risk from "the already-present threat of climate change."

"This is all real," President Obama said, speaking of the Alaskan climate change effects in his weekly address. "This is happening to our fellow Americans right now."

Obama's name change was met with resistance from lawmakers in Ohio, the home state of President McKinley.

"Mount McKinley... has held the name of our nation's 25th President for over 100 years," said Ohio Republican representative Bob Gibbs. "This landmark is a testament to his countless years of service to our country."

"We must retain this national landmark's name in order to honor the legacy of this great American president and patriot," agreed Ohio Democratic representative Tim Ryan.

Regardless of the backlash in Ohio, the name change is happening, and Alaska's senator Lisa Murkowski released a video thanking Obama for "working with us to achieve this significant change to show honor, respect, and gratitude to the Athabascan people of Alaska."

Members of Sisters and Brothers. Photo by Alex Hullah

Wadeye is a remote Aboriginal community situated in the Top End of Australia's Northern Territory (NT). For the past two and a half years, it's been home to council worker Kellum Steele. Originally from Melbourne, the 35-year-old moved to this isolated town to learn about Aboriginal culture, having grown up with the non-Indigenous side of his family. He spent over 20 years searching for his Aboriginal mother, from whom he was taken as a child, only to meet her just once before she passed away.

Steele is a brotherboy, a term that refers to an Indigenous transgender man. He came to the realization about his gender while living in Wadeye, after having always known that he had a male spirit living within a female body.

When he began to transition, Steele felt lucky to be a member of the Kamilaroi/Goomeroi tribe. His first step was approaching the community elders, who were very accepting of his choice and announced to the rest of the town what was going to happen. "Now all the kids tell me, 'You're a boy.' Whereas before they were asking, 'Are you a boy or a girl?'" he said.

Steele is a brotherboy, an Indigenous transgender man, who came to this realization while living in Wadeye. Photo by Alex Hullah

But it's not as easy for all brotherboys and sistergirls (the Indigenous term for someone who has undergone a male to female transition). For many there is a lack of acceptance within their community, which can lead to mental health issues, drug and alcohol problems, homelessness, and even suicide.

These issues stem from the lack of services available for people transitioning in remote communities or within the Northern Territory as a whole. "I went to Darwin Hospital and they basically told me to go to Sydney or Melbourne and try and get help," Steele explained.

Like many brotherboys, Steele felt like he was the only person in his situation. He began researching transgender people in remote communities on the internet and found a TEDx speech by Starlady, a transgender activist from Alice Springs. Steele sent a message to Starlady and they began speaking over the phone. "Starlady sort of opened the doors. She was really helpful," Steele remarked.

Starlady is a transgender woman, who began her journey to find her identity while traveling to local and then remote Aboriginal communities in the Red Centre area of the Northern Territory, performing with a collective of people during the winters of 2000 to 2005.

Starlady and Rosalina Curtis at the Alice Springs Pride Carnivale. Photo by Rhett-Hammerton

After discovering her trans identity and finding acceptance in the desert, she left behind her life in Melbourne and moved to Alice Springs. She began running a mobile hairdressing salon that travelled to these remote communities. "Once I started, the kids were addictive. They were fun and playful and they loved it. I was really happy when I was working in those communities, so I started to make it my life," she recalled.

Starlady is a founding member of Sisters and Brothers NT (S&BNT), an advocacy group for people of diverse gender, sex, and sexuality. The organization is non-funded and run by volunteers, which now include Steele. S&BNT provide support to sistergirls, brotherboys, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous members of the local LGBTIQ community. They've recently produced a series of cross-cultural resources, which are desperately needed in the region, as up until now those available neglected the Indigenous communities.

The group is also campaigning for much needed transgender, gender diverse, and intersex focused peer support services. "There needs to be major structural change in the NT and services need to be more inclusive of the LGBTIQ community, including out [in the] bush," Starlady outlined, adding that the NT government has, "massive levels of homophobia and transphobia that are blocking services to the community, including indigenous youth."

But there are some services such as non-governmental organization Northern Territory Aids and Hepatitis Council (NTAHC) and the Alice Springs Women's Shelter that have been collaborating with S&BNT. According to NTAHC executive director Kim Gates there are no funded services for LGBTIQ specific needs in the NT, leaving the community to access mainstream services, which is often difficult due to discrimination.

"Access to health services is difficult for transgender people, particularly those living in remote communities, where clinics are established as male and female spaces," Gates told VICE. "When transgender or intersex people do access health services there is limited knowledge within the health profession on how to deliver services to this client group or where to refer them."

NTAHC are currently in consultations with the LGBTIQ community, including S&BNT, over the "need for peer-led gender services in the NT to provide social support to transgender and intersex people." They aim to lodge a funding submission with NT Minister of Health John Elferink and the Department of Health.

Intersex advocate Georgie Yovanovic. Photo by Alex Hullah

Georgie Yovanovic, an Alice Springs resident of four years, joined S&BNT a year ago. She's an intersex advocate, who identifies as female, and is campaigning for the end of medical intervention on intersex people without their consent. She claims these procedures, which are performed upon adolescents, are human rights abuses that cause mental health issues and trauma. Yovanovic is not alone; in 2013 the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture condemned the practice in a report.

Intersex people are "born with atypical physical sex characteristics" and are estimated to make up 1.7 percent of the population. And it's very common for them to undergo these interventions, which are also referred to as normalizing surgery.

"That's what shocked me, normalizing surgery is a regular standard procedure for any child born with an intersex variation," Yovanovic said and went onto explain her own experience. "I had medical intervention from 13 until 18. They basically put fear into my parents to normalize me, to turn me into a man, which doesn't work. I've been on medication since to counteract it."

According to Yovanovic, the crux of the problem is that the medical profession is trying to surgically make intersex people normal, rather than recognizing they already are. "It's a natural biology and there's been intersex people around as long as humans have been around. We're just a variation of something in between the male and female, and always have been."

A 2013 Senate committee recommended that medical interventions should be deferred until an individual can give fully informed consent. Yovanovic believes this recommendation should be enacted into law.

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Photograph by Lalitree Darnielle. Courtesy of Farrar, Straus and Giroux

John Darnielle is the author of two works of fiction, 2008's Black Sabbath's Master of Reality and 2014's Wolf in White Van (which was excerpted in VICE). He has also released a staggering amount of music, going back to the early 90s. It's been a little tricky, that transition, because there's a great temptation to read the books through the songs of his band (and sometimes solo moniker), the Mountain Goats. It's not that there aren't shared preoccupations: mutual incomprehension between children and adults (that often spikes into psychological or physical violence); characters who crave aesthetic fulfillment in a world that can be drab and cruel; and young people who struggle to build meaningful lives in terrible circumstances, and who are set in opposition to blind, stupid, harmful institutions. But that only gets you so far. The trouble with getting hung up on the book-song relationship is that his novels are more like other people's novels than they are like his own songs.

So as books, what are these two novels like?

Master of Reality is slim—112 pages. And there's something about its size that makes it feel intimate, a container of secrets, a feeling that's amplified by its publication as part of the 33⅓ book series, which pairs a writer with a single album, usually in a nonfiction mode. It's as though you've found a secret book hiding behind a cover disguise that protects it from non-initiates. Narrated in diary-form by a teen locked in a mental health facility, Master of Reality is volatile, sad, and often quite funny, as the narrator goes on at length about his life and its relationship to the Black Sabbath album from which the book takes its title. Wolf in White Van—officially, Darnielle's debut novel, and a National Book Award nominee—is narrated by a character who has also spent time in an institutional medical setting. But the book, despite being only 224 pages, is a monster. It is an expansive, formally bold piece of work that moves through two decades of the narrator's life after his release from the hospital, while making continuous lateral moves into the world of a strange (and for some, dangerously enthralling) game the narrator has built—a massive, by-mail cousin to the computer-text adventures that were popular in the 1970s and early 1980s. Wolf in White Van is a powerful addition to recent literature dealing with the fallout from trauma, one that will appeal to fans of Scott Heim's Mysterious Skin (for the emotional openness and youthful acting out and aesthetic want) and Tom McCarthy's Remainder (for the response to trauma with the creation of massive, obliterating system).

Darnielle and I spoke last week by phone about Pasolini's Medea, his childhood experiences with art films, and the other futures that he might have had.

VICE: You're about to introduce Pasolini's Medea at Lincoln Center. How did that gig come about?
John Darnielle: They asked about presenting a movie. My taste in movies is generally not what other people expect of me. I love horror movies. I like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre—that's my favorite movie. They told me, "If you want to do Texas Chainsaw Massacre you can, but we did that last year." And I'm not current on movies—I mainly watch horror movies, the kind of stuff that I'm super into I don't think is what they're trying to screen at a film program. I don't fancy myself to be the guy going, "Oh, yes! I made them screen Silent Night, Deadly Night"—that's not my style. I thought about what I've enjoyed that they might be groovin' on screening, and I thought, I haven't watched Pasolini movies in years, but I used to really like him—especially when I was into Greek tragedy really heavily. Because he did two: He did Oedipus, and he did Medea. His Oedipus is fucking incredible—the murder scene, right, where he kills his father? In tragedy, there's this elevated tone that Pasolini rightly thinks brings none of the brutality to the stuff. And so when Oedipus kills his father, it's like something out of The Warriors. One guy meets another guy in the road and says, "You're in my goddamn way!" and kills him. It's really great.

Medea is unique, insofar as it's Maria Callas's only on-screen appearance. She's one of the great singers, and possibly the greatest diva who's ever lived, and has this incredible face, which exists a lot in photographs but not so much in films, right? And she's also in a very interesting place in her career, insofar as she has used a lot of her voice up, both by performing, and I think she was a cigarette smoker. So she's in the twilight of her sale-ability. In part, also, she's a woman, and in an opera—opera's a little more forgiving, and we weren't as caught up in youth culture then as we are now—but still, it's a thing of when you start to get old they don't offer you the same roles, you know? And Medea is explicitly about those sorts of questions. Medea is about a king who has discarded his older wife for a younger one. And Medea is arguing that she counts too, that she's a person, not somebody else's accessory. I don't know if you've seen the movie. It's so brutal and awesome—it's like a doom-metal record.

It's shocking. It's intensely queer and homoerotic, and it's extremely bloody. There's the scene of the male sacrifice near the beginning—
But there's this opening sequence that's kind of insufferable, right? It's very art house. The centaur is sitting there explaining everything in political terms to this child. They sort of immerse you in theory and thought, and bludgeon you with it so you're like, "OK, let me think about some of these things he's talking about a little bit." And then the next thing you see is this visceral scene, there's no dialogue at all, just blood and community and sacrifice. It's so great that people of Pasolini's generation took their theory so seriously. They're like, "No, no, no. The theory is talking about this."

Having said that, that opening sequence—I consider it insufferable.

A lot of the brutality is done through what we don't see. It's done through these edits, and then we see, like, meat. We see a guy, and then we see pieces of meat. It's shocking. My boyfriend is a horror fan, and he sat down to watch it with me the other night, and even he was covering his eyes a bit.
Pasolini really makes you feel it. He makes you smell it.

I've been having a lot of anxiety about how to present Pasolini because I'm a straight dude, I'm just a married guy, right? And Pasolini's sexuality is a huge part of who he is as a filmmaker. Nobody's out in Italy at this time, and Pasolini is very loudly out. But he's living and working in Italy, and he's celebrated. I sort of don't feel like I'm the guy qualified to be talking on that: How do you present something where you go, "Well, go read these guys, but it's really not my position to talk about it"—I'm having some anxiety about that.

Well, it's such a rich film, it seems like you could attack it from any number of angles.
But at the same time, you've got the ghost of Pasolini in the background going, "If you don't say this about me, you're not telling the truth about me."

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Do you remember the first time you saw a Pasolini movie?
So I was super lucky when I was a kid. At Pitzer, there was a Sunday night film series at Avery Auditorium where they would show—I think it was usually a double-feature, but I can't remember. There was at least one movie a week on Sunday nights, and for most of the time when I was 12, 13, 14—super formative years—they were going on. They were showing Fassbinder, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok. They were showing Andy Warhol's Trash, which I saw when I was 14. And I'm sitting there looking at Jackie Curtis, right, who I know from Lou Reed songs. "Oh my god, there she is," and freaking the fuck out, it's like 1982, right? If you lived on the West Coast, you had no prayer of seeing these people unless you had somebody local who was determined to screen them, which in this case of Pitzer was some college students who were showing these movies.

That's crazy. How were you watching European art movies at a college at 12?
My stepfather is this figure who—one of my biggest regrets is, it's hard to present a person with whom you've experienced an abusive relationship, to give a 360-degree view—but he was a smart guy. He was making sure that I got exposed to culture. So when I was 12, I knew what I wanted to see. I was branching out, I tended to gravitate to the queer stuff that he was not into. Pasolini, that was my stuff. He liked Pasolini because Pasolini was a Marxist. I liked Pasolini because Pasolini likes blood.

That's the mystery of life—all the things you might've been. All the yous that you have been over the course of your life resolve into the one you are now. –John Darnielle

Maria Callas and Nadia Stancioff in 'Medea' (1970). Photo: San Marco/Films No. 1/Janus/The Kobal Collection. Courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center

Pasolini's film has two endings. It's as though the audience has to choose between them, or in any case, consider the split possibilities. And here's where I'd like to start talking about Wolf in White Van, because at the heart of your novel there's this game called Trace Italian that the narrator, Sean, created, and the game has a Garden-of-Forking-Paths [by Jorge Luis Borges], Choose-Your-Own-Adventure sort of style—Sean has file cabinets filled with thousands of pre-determined decision points that create a vast world of possibilities for players. So: What is the impulse in these worlds with parallel, mutually exclusive possibilities that we find so compelling?
So this is what it does for me: When you write a song, because songs for me are a very propulsive process, they have a number of possibilities at first, right? And then you find the one, put it in the rhythm you like, not just musically, but there's a narrative, image-matic rhythm that you like, and you follow that. For me, it tends to happen very quickly—it just plays itself out and, boom, I'm done. I tend to finish songs in a day. Sometimes the beginning of it will sit around and gestate, but it's not something I'm sitting around for months doing and going, "Oh, well, do I want the guy to wear a mask or not wear a mask?" These are songs I deal with in a very performative way.

When you write a book, you have all these decisions to make, and you realize that you're in a space of incredible freedom where you can just write 60 pages that you know you're not going to use to explore the father's viewpoint, right? And write something from the perspective of the minister, who doesn't wind up being in the book. But you can do all this extra play. I feel like a movie is this same sort of big project, where as you're making it, you go, "Well, we could shoot this, or we could shoot this. How much time and money do we have?" Which is not something you ask in the book. You get your due date, but that's about it, so you can do whatever you have time for.

With Pasolini, I think, he's doing two versions because he can't pick. Because anybody's story has so many possibilities in it. That's the mystery of life—all the things you might've been. All the yous that you have been over the course of your life resolve into the one you are now. But you look at them and you think about the time you didn't go out to get more booze and you went, "No, I'm too drunk to drive." And you say, "But what if I'd died that night? What if I'd died? Or what if I was incredibly injured? It would've changed the course of my life."

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It's crossing the street and you're not paying attention and the bus whisks by, and then you're inside that kind of shocking moment that only lasts a short while where you're like, "How close was I really to getting hit by that bus? Was I a split second away from—"
You know that Sarah Dougher song, "40 Hours"? It's about her leaving her marriage to discover a new identity for herself, and she drives 40 hours from I think San Antonio, Texas, to the West Coast, and she said, "Inside every house along the way, possibilities." You get that oceanic feeling, like, "In every house, more stories than I can possibly imagine."

And I think Pasolini is doing that with Medea. I think he's also exploring. He's telling us something about Greek tragedy because most of these stories—when the tragedians write their version, they're only writing their version, which sometimes is a local version, and sometimes can be a version where it's like, "Well, I have something of my own to bring to this."

But many of them write the same tragedies with different plot points. This is my favorite thing. Because it is your life. We sort of think of stories as so rigid, but you go, "Well, you know, in some versions of John Darnielle's story, he doesn't come out of his heroin overdoes in 1986, he never wakes up, nobody ever hears of him, and he dies." But in other versions, he recovers and is injured, and never really walks right, but he otherwise is the same John you know. And in the third version, right, and so forth—and these are all true, these are all possibilities. And I think Pasolini is talking about how the Greeks knew this, because I think Pasolini—like a lot of artists who engage with tragedy—comes to this realization, or maybe already had it going into it, that those guys were really ahead of the game. They really understood that when you tell a story, you are in the space of infinite possibility, and every one of them opens onto different implications, and they're all interesting.

Mark Doten is the author of The Infernal (Graywolf Press) and co-host of humorous literary podcast The Consolation Prize. Follow him on Twitter.

John Darnielle is in New York City for two events. He will introduce Pasolini's Medea at the Film Society of Lincoln Center on Monday, August 31, and on Tuesday, September 1, he will read at the Strand bookstore for the launch of the paperback of Wolf in White Van (Picador).

This is what a Pass from the Pass and Permit system looked like. Courtesy Colonialism Boards Co.

Micheal Langan remembers his first skateboard from 20 years ago: a scratched-up John Drake Alien Workshop deck with a graphic of a red and blue sparrow.

"It was a used one, and I remember my mom didn't have much money at the time," he said, though she managed to also get him some trucks and hardware, and he started learning how to skate, instantly falling in love with the sport.

"Just the sounds, you know, the sound it made, the board going on the ground and just everything about skateboarding caught my attention," he added. "All my senses were just like, 'Oh my god, this is fucking awesome.'"

He kept the old school deck until it was thrown out by his family while cleaning the house. He was never able to find another one like it, but he says he would pay whatever price for it if he could.

According to Langan, all the kids were obsessed with having the coolest design and showing them off when they went skating in their small town just outside Cote First Nations on the eastern edge of Saskatchewan.

Backside 180 nose grind. Courtesy Micheal Langan.

Langan grew up moving with his cousins between Cote and Regina, where he saw huge differences between life on a reserve and in the city—differences that were deeper than just the quality of skate spots.

"Before, I remember there were alcohol problems there, as a kid, and some weed. But now, it's like there's an epidemic of addiction with methadone and stuff like that," he said about the reserve.

"On my reserve you can't even drink the water. There are so many reserves [where] they can't drink their water, they have to go get bottled water," he said. "I just see how much the Indian Act has done on First Nation reserves, it took a huge toll on them. If more people would understand that legislation, they would understand the issues happening in Aboriginal communities."

These experiences informed his decision to start designing his own skateboards and create decks that teach about the issues he's seen his whole life—colonialism, genocide, and other Aboriginal rights issues that have survived generations.

The first board he created under the banner Colonialism Skateboards carries the image representing the Pass and Permit System, which was designed to regulate Indigenous peoples' movements and economic activities. It essentially confined Aboriginal peoples to reserves, and was still in use up until 1960.

360 flip. Photo Courtesy Micheal Langan.

The current deck design is a copy of an actual pass giving written permission for a person named Big Prairie Head to leave the reserve to sell chickens. The pass reads that it is only valid until sunset. If you didn't make it back before the time indicated on the pass, you could be fined or imprisoned.

"Some parents had some kids in residential schools, and they needed the pass system to go and visit their children," he explained. "Sometimes their children didn't even come back and they don't know what happened to their kids."

Langan's friend, Noel Wendt, is the owner of one of the stores selling the Colonialism skateboards across Saskatchewan. They met through the skate community about 15 years ago.

"We have sold so many—as of yesterday I think he literally had four boards left out of his initial 50, so that was only in a couple weeks, so it's pretty amazing. It's our best selling board right now. Hands down," he said. "We had one family come from one of the reserves around Regina and they bought three completes just because of what it was."

Wendt says that although it's common for people to want to support local brands, it's not often that they start to sell so well after only a couple of weeks.

"People are very fickle, they're gonna want this brand or this brand, and [be] somewhat loyal to those brands especially the boards—you get used to a certain shape and feel," he explained.

Langan just submitted another order for a new board that will feature an image of a solemn class picture from a residential school. Other designs Langan considered creating include Poundmaker, and artwork by artists in the community that still focus on colonialism.

Langan became motivated to do this project after reading more about the Canadian history of First Nations, and how it affects people today. His grandfather, Senator Henry Langan, was also involved in helping on the Cote reserve, his main goal was to create better education for his people.

The next board design for Langan's company. Image credit is Glenbow Museum in Calgary, Alberta.

He has also been planning to donate part of his earnings to a charity such as Carmichael Outreach, where he says some Aboriginal people in need go to find help in their region.

Wendt has high hopes for his friend, and has been able to see first hand the growth and future potential of the project being able to get Langan's message moving.

"You have to think of new and creative ways to spread messages, especially in this age when there's a million distractions around. And if it happens to be skateboarding that does it, that's amazing."

Although the purpose of these boards is still primarily to educate people about what colonialism is, he hopes this creates a conversation for a better education system, and end negative stereotypes of First Nations people.

"Get more people to understand and engage with it—hopefully do their own research on these issues. That's the main goal," said Langan. "At the same time grab a board and put some grip tape on it and go and friggin' thrash down the street."

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Vester Lee Flanagan went by Bryce Williams on camera. Via YouTube

Around 7 AM on Wednesday, Vester Lee Flanagan II texted a friend. "I'm sorry," he wrote. "I had no other choice."

The 41-year-old, who at the time was being chased by police after killing two former coworkers at a local news station and uploading the footage to social media, told Robert Avent not to respond.

And at first, he didn't. Avent was still asleep, and couldn't call back for a few hours, when he was at work. When the friends finally connected, Flanagan told his former gym buddy to check CNN and promptly hung up. Moments later, Flanagan was dead.

Since the August 26 shooting of Alison Parker and Adam Ward, a bevy of lawsuits, manifestos, suicide notes, and other documents have emerged to tell the story of how Flanagan went from being a male escort to a failed TV anchor to a disgruntled shooter. In them, he claimed variously that he was depressed over his failing looks and enraged over perceived racial injustices perpetrated by people he'd worked with over the years.

After the shooting, authorities discovered that the decor in Flangan's apartment consisted almost entirely of headshots and pictures of him working as a TV anchor.

Flangan's outrage seems to go all the way back to his high school days, according to one of his suicide notes, which were sent to ABC News. In it, he claims that he was kicked off the football team by coaches who were jealous of his good looks.

His life seemed to hit a high point around 1996, when he took his first job in Savannah, Georgia. It was there that he fell in love with a guy named Kenny, according to the note.

"Ken was there for me in ways I cannot even describe," Flanagan wrote. "What a great experience that was—all around. A scenic/romantic city...a new romance...a career hitting on all cylinders. Sadly, we only had a short period of 'happiness' as it related to my career, anyway."

His life started unraveling again after he moved to Florida. In a 2000 lawsuit, Flanagan claimed that after taking a job in Tallahassee, he was bullied and profiled. He would repeat similar allegations in Roanoke, Virginia, after he was fired from a job there in 2013 for being difficult. In another harassment case, Flanagan called the situation "nothing short of vile, disgusting, and inexcusable," according to the New York Times. Flanagan reportedly reacted to that firing by killing and ceremoniously burying his two cats.

Even after he was terminated and working a series of insurance jobs, Flanagan continued to live in a drab apartment, right across from the TV station. His neighbors there say he was combative and sometimes flung cat feces onto peoples' porches. (And video has emerged of a July road rage incident that took place after another driver confronted Flanagan for driving erratically.)

In the weeks leading up to the shooting, Flanagan started calling ABC in advance of faxing his suicide notes. In his final missive, he claimed was responding to South Carolina church shooter Dylann Roof and wanted to start a race war.

But a separate manifesto eventually delivered to his friend Robert Avent—who passed it along to the New York Daily News—offers alternative motivations that center on his previous employment as a male escort. According to Avent's account, Flanagan was more concerned with his fleeting looks than with racism.

"I totally CANNOT score right now. . .," Flanagan wrote his friend. "And this is from a man who used to be paid hundreds an HOUR to sleep with men." In the letter, he claimed that he was upset about getting old, and was afraid that heads would "stop turning" at his appearance.

During his final conversation with Avent, Flanagan remained calm. "Oh, I did something this morning," he apparently said. "I shot and killed two people."

"How come you're talking to me in a calm voice?'" Avent told the Daily News he remembered saying.

"Well, you know, I just feel, I didn't like those people," Flanagan reportedly replied.

The disgruntled former newsman then told his friend he wasn't going to prison, and that he loved him. He abruptly terminated the call and shot himself in the head.

Follow Allie Conti on Twitter.

Wes Craven's movies have been there for me, time and time again.

Watching Nightmare on Elm Street 1 and 3 in grade school at the home of my Friend with Permissive Parents, I absolutely lost my shit when the ghostly girls sang Freddy's theme while jump-roping.

Watching People Under the Stairs in my dorm room in college—my personal favorite of all Craven's movies—I was wowed to discover the pulp majesty of Everett McGill of Twin Peaks fame, playing opposite Twin Peaks co-star Wendy Robie, putting on a gimp onesie to chase preteen boys through his house with a shotgun.

Years later, re-watching Craven's movies alongside my wife— Shocker, Cursed, the Nightmare films—in the early delirious days of new parenthood, how soon the surreal and the real became one, our predawn house alive with werewolves and killers that just wouldn't die onscreen and infant cries from the other bedroom.

Wes Craven, who died yesterday of brain cancer in his Los Angeles home at 76, made smart, playful horror, aware of itself and aware of the culture it sought to reflect. His work is meta-commentary—on my life, on yours, on American lives.

After a brief academic career teaching English at Westminster College in Pennsylvania, Craven got his start in porn—ever the auteur, he wrote and directed. Fittingly, he went on to direct the rape-replete, ultra-violent The Last House on the Left, his first feature film, in 1972, which was followed five years later by his second early career classic, The Hills Have Eyes (1977). The former, a brutal revenge parable about the abduction and sexual assault of two teenage girls by a gang of psychopaths, and the latter, a gritty survival tale about a family being marauded by mutant desert-dwellers, were transgressive and bloody films that pandered to shock, lizard-brain voyeurism. They towed the line of exploitation, and both were remade in the last several years.

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Craven became big medicine in 1984 with the release of A Nightmare on Elm Street , which he wrote and directed. Made for 1.8 million dollars and starring someone named Johnny Depp in his first-ever film, the movie follows small-town teens as they're stalked and dispatched by a dead child molester in a dirty striped sweater with razors for fingers who goes by the name of Freddy Kruger (Kruger's inspiration was supposedly a vagrant that a ten-year-old Craven once saw peering in his window). Kruger appears to the teens in their dreams, clawing their sternums while spouting grim stand-up.

Apart from being one of two of Craven's concepts to be en-franchised, A Nightmare on Elm Street also spawned a motif that would proliferate over the course of Craven's career: the surreal and the grotesque's intrusion upon the everyday. And sometimes vice-versa: the everyday's intrusion on the patently unreal. A Nightmare on Elm Street has sequences of horrifying temporal dislocation to rival Fellini or Jodorowsky: a corpse in a body-bag walking a hallway, a bed spouting blood that floods over the ceiling.

The Serpent and the Rainbow (1988), The People Under the Stairs (1991), and Wes Craven's New Nightmare (1994)—the seventh and only other film that Craven directed in the Freddy Kruger series—would continue to ensure that the line between nightmare and not was as solid as a film-reel border.

As the line between fantasy and reality became increasingly blurred in Craven's mid-career films, so, too, did the separation between character and viewer, between narrative worlds and the world we inhabit. The meta-commentary of Craven's films was never more pronounced than in 1996's Scream, in which teens in a small town not unlike the town in Nightmare are dispatched by yet another killer. This killer, however, is no boogeyman: It wears a ghost costume; it kills with a knife. The teens have gotten savvy, too. They delineate "rules" to "survive [horror movies]." They scream: "No, please don't kill me, Mr. Ghostface. I wanna be in the sequel!"

Not only would Scream go on to spawn another successful franchise—where only the first and seventh Nightmare films were directed by Craven, he took the helm for all four Screams—but it realized the gleeful indeterminacy between fantasy and reality, between narrative and lived experience, that the director had been gesturing at his entire career. Craven's films' hack-and-slash self-awareness laid a track toward innovation: Eli Roth's Cabin Fever (2002), Drew Goddard's Cabin in the Woods (2012), and David Robert Mitchell's It Follows (2014) are all whip-smart horror films; smarter for the fact they know it.

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Craven said of the rationale behind the meta-elements in Wes Craven's New Nightmare: "You don't enter the theater and pay your money to be afraid. You enter the theater and pay your money to have the fears that are already in you when you go into a theater dealt with and put into a narrative. Stories and narratives are one of the most powerful things in humanity. They're devices for dealing with the chaotic danger of existence."

Art imitates life as life imitates art. Between the two, there's only credits.

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Image by Ben Thomson

"Twenty-four!" says the man interviewing me. "Twenty-four! The best days of your life!" Eyes bright on me, he pushes his reading glasses up his forehead. "All that energy and partying and casual sex!" I cross my legs uncomfortably, even that small motion takes effort. While my 40-year-old prospective employer reminisces about his glory days, my inner countdown clock to collapse is ticking.

But he drones on, after all he doesn't know about my condition. He just sees a 20-something girl with an Arts degree. But medical bills are crushing me, and I really need this job. As the CEO assures me of his confidence that I can handle front-of-house and the accounts ("Only temporary until Mark gets back from Sweden!"), my legs shake a little. The interview is already running long, that means the little energy I've saved for grocery shopping later is now spent. The CEO gestures to the cramped reception desk, piled with archive boxes: "A project for you!"

Later at home, I feel hopeless. Every job I apply for expects me to work long hours for little pay and mortgage my own nervous system to get a foot in the door. The assumption is that youth equals health—but here I am, young and chronically ill. I'm terrified to bring up my medical condition with employers, since telling them "I am not able to do that" feels like saying "Do not hire me."

It's easy to feel unwanted as a person with a disability when the government and some media outlets consistently refer to you as a "bludger," "slacker," or "burden." In July, the Daily Telegraph published a photo of Australia's Social Services Minister Scott Morrison with the headline "He Rorter Be Congratulated," celebrating the fact that Disability Support Pension (DSP) claimants were being rejected at the highest rate in ten years. The implication was that every rejected applicant was a would-be "rorter" [cheater] of the system, because why else do people apply for disability support? Morrison has stated that the government's goal is to "relieve the burden on the system," specifically by cracking down on DSP recipients aged 35 and under.

The previous two governments have made young people with disability a focal point when examining disability support. Focusing on mandated activities such as re-training or work for the dole—programs that frame people with disabilities as unskilled and having little value.

Dr. Louise Humpage, a senior lecturer at the University of Auckland, says this kind of conversation frames "paid work as the first and most fundamental duty of citizens." And places the problem on "the individual and their impairment, rather than in the way in which disability is socially constructed." It tells people with disabilities it's their responsibility to fit into a workforce that is largely inaccessible to them, rather than ask the workforce to make an effort to be more inclusive of their needs.

"Let's encourage them to work rather than sitting on welfare—that's a council of despair," said former Social Services Minister Kevin Andrews, when discussing the issue. Politicians are quick to call work a dignity, to describe disability pensioners as "sitting on welfare." But living with disability requires active management, creativity, and resourcefulness; and adequately feeding, housing, and caring for yourself isn't just "sitting around."

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At 29-years-old, I now rely on the Disability Support Pension as my main source of income. Trying to manage my disability while also working is beyond my physical capacity. When I have held jobs, I faced confrontations like a restaurant manager telling me she was cutting back my shifts because "you can't keep up with the other waitstaff." I still get cold sweats and panic-hoard cans of lentils just in case mine is the next pension to be cut. The DSP for me isn't about choosing an easy life, it means an end to food insecurity. It sets me free from the cycle of poverty-line casual jobs that made me sicker, giving me the flexibility to work from home instead.

There's all this talk about whether the DSP is a "set and forget" payment. I often feel forgotten by the government, but not because they set me a pension. I feel remembered every time that payment hits my bank account. The money itself is my dignity: it allows me to eat until I'm full, to afford a new winter blanket, to live somewhere I feel safe. It beats vomiting quietly into a bucket next to my bed because the bathroom is too far away and I'm afraid of my Gumtree-found roommates.

A 2011 analysis of World Health Organization statistics found that "the health of young people has been largely neglected in global public health because this age group is perceived as healthy." People tell us these are "the best days of your life," but youth with disability is still disability.

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Read more comics by Lauren Monger at her Tumblr and Twitter.